finding highlighted(preselcted) text using xpath or css

Question

In following 2 snippets of html code, I'm trying to create xpath or css for finding if span(Element1 in snippet 1 and Element 2 in snippet 2) are highlighted(preselected) when page is loaded

Snippet 1:

<div id="idc" class="tre">
  <ul id="idCatT_srt_ul" class="abc">
    <li class="treN treB treSelected" title="Element1 title">
      <span class="spclass">Element1</span>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

Snippet 2:

<div id="idA" class="tre" >
 <ul id="idAc_srt_ul" class="treChi treRtChil">
  <li class="treeN treB treeLast treSelected" title="Element 2 Title">
    <span>Element 2 Text</span>
  </li>
 </ul>
</div>

Answer 1

If the treSelected class attribute value denotes that it is preselected, then the following XPATH statement would work:

span[parent::li[contains(@class,'treSelected')]]

It will match on span elements who's parent is an li element that contains a class attribute that contains 'treSelected'.